Kindergarten visit at the FMQ
How would you explain to a kid what an atom is? We faced this question when a local kindergarten visited us at the FMQ. The kids had the opportunity to enter one of our precision labs of the Loth group in the ZAQ and see a scanning tunneling microscope. To experience microscopy with their own eyes, the kids could take a look through one of our optical microscopes, where they could see hair enlarged. Printed-out scans of atomic silicon surfaces were used to demonstrate size comparisons to the hair they had just seen through the optical microscope, demonstrating how small atoms are. To sweeten up the visit to our institute, we made ice cream, using liquid nitrogen, for the kids.
Kindergarten kids looking through an optical microscope in the ZAQ and making ice cream with liquid nitrogen.
Photo: Sebastian Loth